Time magazine today published a wide-ranging, news-making and sometimes head-scratching interview it conducted this week with President Donald Trump to mark his first 100 days in office.
Trump spent much of the interview defending his economic policies and tariffs. The president insisted that what he’s doing is right and will make the country “very rich” before long. “This is a tremendous success,” he said. “You just don't know it yet, but this is a tremendous success what’s happening. We're taking in billions and billions of dollars, money that we never took in before. We're also, very importantly, because of that, because of the money we're taking in, those companies are going to come back and they're going to make their product here.”
Trump also made the mystifying claim that he’s already made a couple hundred trade deals. “I’ve made 200 deals,” he said.
“You’ve made 200 deals?” Time asked.
“100%,” Trump insisted.
Asked to share who he’s cut deals with, Trump tried to reframe the conversation, perhaps implying that he has decided unilaterally on the terms he wants. “View it differently: We are a department store, and we set the price,” he said. “I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don't have to pay it. They don't have to do business with the United States, but I set a tariff on countries.”
Trump also said that China’s President Xi Jinping had called him about the tariffs, but when asked about that conversation, Trump returned to his metaphor, saying: “We all want to make deals. But I am this giant store. It's a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I'll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.”
China continues to deny that Trump and Xi have spoken. “China and the U.S. have not held consultations or negotiations on the issue of tariffs,” a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said at a news conference on Friday. “The United States should not confuse the public.”
Trump says he was joking when he promised to end the war in Ukraine on day one: The president said he was speaking “figuratively” when he promised to end war between Russia and Ukraine on his first day back in the White House and that comment was “an exaggeration” made “in jest.”